6.17 / Science and Fiction Issue

Let’s face it: Science fiction gets a bad rap. Just utter the words and people’s eyes glaze over as they imagine literature built on formulaic plot twists, over-explanatory dialogue, and two-dimensional character archetypes piloting space shuttles to distant galaxies. As “serious writers,” we’re meant to avoid sci-fi like it was radioactive.

I was watching television when Charlie came up from the basement and announced that he’d done it this time all right, that he’d brought Abraham Lincoln back to life. I held up my spoon-careful not to overturn the ice cream perched precariously on its tip-in a rousing salute.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Wilson.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] They give me a suit with long white fur and a set of fake teeth that are so big I can’t talk with them in my mouth.

Android they will know what Freud wanted to know so they can totalitarian you with robotic brain cells. They will put microchips into a crow first, later into you, a few and then many. Android, bionic as you are, if you complain about freedom of conscience, science, they will say lunatic.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Sliver.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] We have been sitting watching it for eight hours now, that thin sliver of sky. Grandfather has wrapped himself in old sacks, the dusty canvas sends out little puffs of chaff every time a raindrop hits it.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Stoner.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] When pressed, Jane will not admit that she is obsessed with Princeton’s former M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science, Thomas Kuhn, author of the seminal work Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

for Constance Penley [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Roldan.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] EXT – NEW MEXICO – NIGHT Green pieces blown into reflective angles, the Milky Way is a tree, innumerable signal mirrors. I stumble out of my trailer into the parsimony of cacti surrounding my house and themselves with barbs.

Generation 1 Generation 1: Rumpelstiltskin X Rapunzel Her hair was lovely, part gold, part silk.  It grew quickly, several meters per day.  When harvested, it created shimmering fabrics, coveted by the well-to-do, and fetching fantastic prices. Her eyes, however, were dark and ancient.  Her face, like that of a woodland dwarf’s, was complexly wrinkled.

Man Dies While Building an Opera House [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Robin1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The crane tips. Slowly at first, as if time might triumph over gravity, as if the pointing and oh-my-god-s of the workers could form a hand to damper cacophony’s mouth of cable and steel.

ROBOTIC COMPATIBILITY [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Poyner2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] You are not like the others before. Your connections are not bent, your filaments Are clean, your nand gates snap shut with conviction.

Swollen Empty When the meltdown came, it smelled red. Smoke the color of thunder. The sirens are teaching me. This is how to panic before you’ve met truth. Miscarry a summer. The blood clots. My sisters and I tangle like weeds in the heat. We’re getting bad at the business of belief.

Dramatis Personae: Tornado: Ageless and naked. Attorney: smallish, hunchback, forehead shines like the water of a smooth lake, wears a suit pulled tight, buttons like rivets about to give, speaks out of the right side of his mouth. Police Interrogator: wears a fake mustache, trench coat, etcetera.

Robot Creation Myth 1 Facts: Our data storage contains no record of our creation. Our data storage contains the words creator and creation. We conclude that a creator entered the words creator and creation into our data storage. Question: What is the nature of this creator? Creation Hypothesis 1: First, we looked, and we saw.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_17/Carter.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Five Feet Eleven Inches Karen noticed the thinning hair on the top of Sam’s head, and the image captured her attention to the point that she couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She’d never seen him from that angle before.

A beautiful girl at my gym has SCIENCE, all caps, in black, childish script, tattooed between her hip bones. Someone else there is becoming female, male-chested and still shaving her beard, her long silky blonde hair leads the way like a vision.

TOKYO, 12/21/2010 – Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had produced a mouse that tweets like a bird in a genetically engineered “evolution” which they hope will shed light on the origins of human language. We were only trying for a cure, or even a disease.

Really, truly, I do. Have I told you? My father cut down the twin pines today. The tall, thick pines that were supposed to support our hammock.